Just ordered the computer from PC specialist, same spec as the last page but had to get a bigger case and went with an SSD. Went over budget by £50, came to £650 altogether. They suggested I went with 550w instead of 450w. Thanks again PearOFAnguish and cerberus for your suggestions. Can't wait to get gaming!

@FAULTYCAPSLOCK Its a good spec PC and you wont be disappointed. Did you buy Windows with it or installing that later? You can get Windows 7 for around £40 on ebay, which is what I did and is a rock solid OS for gaming.

Just in case you're wondering how low you can go. I'm happy to report my (admittedly very good tagan) 480w psu is powering my i5 2500k gtx 680 based pc, even overclocked without issue. It has a HDD, SSD, and dvd room in it (and that's about it)

Did a pretty big burn in (and civ 5 session) to verify.

I reckon I could go lower, but that's what I had. It replaced a monstrous 880w tagan psu.

Might be my imagination, but the psu does seem to be running hotter than the 880w based one, which might indicate it's a lot closer to the edge of its output that it should be.

@Carlo I would still be wary and aim to replace it sooner rather then later

I was using a Tagan TG480 U22 PSU from my old dual core socket 939 system 7ish years old to power my new fx6300 system overclocked to 4.8 ish, only differences were CPU, mobo and ram. I was even still running the good old 8800GTS 512MB vid card from the old machine.

All was great until i upgraded the vid card to a mid range Radeon 7770 2gig, the noise from the psu went up, the heat it threw out went up but system stability was rock solid for months until midway through a very fast and tight section on Dirt 3 was brought to an end with a huge bang!

Power supply was the only thing that died so i cant complain, it did its job.

The old collective wisdom was if you wanted a games PC, buy Intel, but in recent months I've seen several recommended budget AMD builds with those extra cores apparently performing well on certain games.

What's the general opinion here at the moment? I had a look on other forums but they weren't what you'd call balanced views. Any information about relative performance, noise, power usage, etc. is appreciated.

I'd probably be spending around £500 in total on the PC. Already own a keyboard, monitor, Windows.

Toms Hardware rates the R9 280X higher in that price bracket, unless the "Twin Frozr" refers to something i don't know about on that specific card?

AMD essentially took its Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, shaved 50 MHz from the peak clock rate, and rebranded the board as a Radeon R9 280X. The good news this month is that the 280X's price tag slips to around £230 (sometimes lower), making it easy to get behind. You can expect playable performance through 1920x1080 in most games and respectable frame rates through 2560x1440 in some titles, all with taxing detail settings enabled. At this price point, it outshines the GeForce GTX 770, the GeForce GTX 760, and the Radeon R9 280.

I got mine from Amazon the other day the XFX version with 3GB of DDR5 too.

You do not necessarily need to upgrade the PSU. A GTX 750 Ti will give you more graphics for cheap and doesn't have hefty power requirements, NVIDIA recommend a minimum 300w supply. Get one of the models which doesn't need an additional power cable and try it, might save you some money.

Intel still getting the nod over AMD then? Standard games PC flexibility and dilemma about spending a bit more. Really it's because I noticed a PS4 was in the same rough price as a reasonable PC which got me thinking.

I'd also stumbled across this site with an AMD build, making me wonder if they were better for budget builds.

THFourteen wrote:
Edit again: I see, they've taken their October 2013 quote and changed the price to £230 to "update" it. For some reason, slightly slower performance and worse drivers make the £230 280X "outshine" the £230 GTX 770? An interesting perspective!

To be fair I snagged a 280x for £190 from Amazon.co.uk last week. Of course the price has shot back up since then to £215 again.

I hold no particular allegiances, but given how closely they're matched I thought I'd save myself £30-40.

I really do hate upgrading stuff. upgrading from a GT 420 to a MSI GTX 750 Ti, (planning on it anyway) and I just have no idea if my PSU can cut it and I'm kinda worried that I read you need to re activate windows when you upgrade things,and I don't have the key since it's an OEM machine. Why don't you tell you the PSU on the outside anyway......

PearOfAnguish wrote:
You do not necessarily need to upgrade the PSU. A GTX 750 Ti will give you more graphics for cheap and doesn't have hefty power requirements, NVIDIA recommend a minimum 300w supply. Get one of the models which doesn't need an additional power cable and try it, might save you some money.

I had a look around yesterday. Most results I got were for a EVGA card.
I was tempted to order one for next day delivery but I'm leaving on vacation the day after tomorrow so I'll be sensible and wait until I've returned.

I did read some reviews that stated they only require the 300W mentioned by POA. I think I'll buy one and plonk it in my machine and see what it does. If the 350W psu doesn't cut it, I can always get an upgrade then.
Might as well give it a go first.

THFourteen wrote:
Edit again: I see, they've taken their October 2013 quote and changed the price to £230 to "update" it. For some reason, slightly slower performance and worse drivers make the £230 280X "outshine" the £230 GTX 770? An interesting perspective!

To be fair I snagged a 280x for £190 from Amazon.co.uk last week. Of course the price has shot back up since then to £215 again.

I hold no particular allegiances, but given how closely they're matched I thought I'd save myself £30-40.

Think mine was £190 last week too.

It seems much of a muchness to me. Steam streaming to my laptop works better than ever!

annoygily they're both the same price too (well a pound in it) what's the difference between the two? (and out of curiousty the MSI doesn't need a power cable or anything right)and just thought I'd double check but the GT420 (my current card) is PCI express 3 like the 750Ti,right?)